Daily Inspiration Quote by William Hazlitt

Hazlitt drops a philosophical mic with the brisk confidence of someone who’s spent his life watching public opinion dress up as thought. “That which is not, shall never be; that which is, shall never cease to be” sounds like metaphysics, but it’s also a critic’s creed: stop begging the world to conjure what isn’t there, and stop pretending what exists can be argued out of existence. The cadence is biblical, the logic almost tautological, and that’s the point. Hazlitt uses inevitability as a rhetorical weapon.

The subtext is impatience with fashionable delusion - political, moral, aesthetic. In an era of revolutions, utopian schemes, and grand theories of human perfectibility, Hazlitt leans into the hard edge of reality. He’s skeptical of the culture’s appetite for “becoming” narratives, the idea that history can be willed into a new shape by optimism or ideology. What is absent isn’t a promise waiting to arrive; it may simply be impossible. What is present - character, appetite, conflict, power - doesn’t politely dissolve because a thinker wants it to.

“To the wise, these truths are self-evident” is where Hazlitt’s critic’s snobbery flashes. He’s not inviting debate; he’s drawing a line between those who can bear plain facts and those who need comforting fictions. The move flatters “the wise,” sure, but it also dares the reader: if you resist this, you’re confessing you’d rather be seduced than instructed. Hazlitt’s intent isn’t serenity; it’s a cold bath.